BYUI Student Solves FAA Problem

Samuel Owens

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Story Published: Feb 28, 2007 at 8:22 PM MDT

Story Updated: Feb 28, 2007 at 8:22 PM MDT

By Nate Eaton

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A BYU-Idaho student is being credited for saving the Federal Aviation Administration millions of dollars.

Samuel Owens interned with the FAA last summer and solved a problem the organizations been trying to solve for years.

He created a program that compares the costs of navigation systems.
Those are used at airports all over the country. After a few years, the systems get old and need to be repaired or replaced.

Sam Owens, BYUI Student: "I really had no idea what I was doing. I just knew that somehow I'd fit perfectly into it. Everything they said was just like [you] did everything above and beyond what we could ever imagine an intern doing."

As an intern, Sam was given the assigned to solve a problem the FAA was having. Officials wanted a program that would help them know what was more cost effective...keeping old navigation systems and constantly repairing them or buying brand new ones.

Owens: "I didn't understand what the difficulty was in understanding this problem. It seemed really basic to me - just find out what the new system cost and subtract what you would have spent on the old system and if it was cheaper to use the new system then go with the new system and if it was cheaper to use the old system go with the old system."

Sam presented his findings to his supervisors, who were shocked.

Owens: "They were just amazed. They were like, 'This only took you six weeks to do?'"

They immediately offered Sam a job, who will graduate next month with a physics degree...something he thought would never land him a job with the FAA.

Owens: "I imagined myself being a physics teacher or something I was going to school for but I always knew I had a knack for business. I always wanted to find a happy medium between the two of them."

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